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Community participation in program decision-making and implementation is an ideal that community and academic stakeholders aspire to in participatory research. This ideal, however, can be difficult to achieve. We describe lessons learned about community participation from a quasi-experimental trial aimed at reducing the uptake of smoking among pre-adolescents in a community with a high percentage of Maori and Pacific Island people. The intervention involves students, parents, school teachers and management, extended families and members of the wider community. A total of approximately 4000 students (and their parents) of four urban Auckland schools were enrolled in the study over 3 years. The intervention is carried out through collaborations between public health professionals, academic institutions and school personnel. In order to enhance community participation, we conclude that (i) time commitment is needed to establish long-term ongoing relationships through face-to-face communication, (ii) research team members should ideally share similar cultural and ethnic backgrounds to the target audience and have in-depth understanding of and experience in the community milieu and (iii) collaborative partnerships between academic institutions and public health services are necessary to create strength and cohesion, and assist with clear articulation of the research project mission and objectives.

Based on an analysis of 19 mummified Maori heads (mokomokai) referred to our forensic laboratory for anthropological analysis prior to their official repatriation from France to New Zealand, and data from the anthropological and medical literature, we propose a complete forensic procedure for the analysis of such pieces. A list of 12 original morphological criteria was developed. Items included the sex, age at death, destruction of the skull base, the presence of argil deposits in the inner part of the skull, nostrils closed with exogenous material, sewing of eyelids and lips, pierced earlobes, ante-mortem and/or post-mortem tattoos, the presence of vegetal fibers within nasal cavities, and other pathological or anthropological anomalies. These criteria were tested for all 19 mokomokai repatriated to New Zealand by the French authorities. Further complementary analyses were limited to fiberscopic examination of the intracranial cavities because of the taboo on any sampling requested by the Maori authorities. In the context of global repatriation of human artifacts to native communities, this type of anthropological expertise is increasingly frequently requested of forensic anthropologists and other practitioners. We discuss the reasons for and against repatriating non-authentic artifacts to such communities and the role played by forensic anthropologists during the authentication process.